So yes. Most of us already have the new personal timeline, will have a new design in our fanpages and probably in the next few days will also have to get use to the new Advertising structure. Get to know everything about what is happening on Facebook to get ready!

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Mar 2014

I’m pretty sure that you’ve noticed Facebook has been malfunctioning over the last few weeks. It’s specially bothering for those of us who uses it with marketing purposes.

A planned post didn’t go public on time? Have you missed a few metrics now and then? Has it frozen when you’ve tried to upload a pic? I know your answers. All that has also happened to me. Why? Because Facebook is rolling one of the biggest changes ever. Three of them, actually:

– The design of your News Feed in personal profiles, that will bring along a severe drop of your posts organic reach.

– A total redesign of the Pages interface.

– A new structure in how ads are organized that will help you get the most out of Facebook Advertising.

Let’s see each of these changes as deeply as possible:

1. News Feed new design (personal profiles)

If I’m not wrong, you all will probably have already this new design. Have you realized it doesn’t differ much from the previous one? The main change is about the pictures that from now onwards will be bigger than they were. That is specially useful for brands, since now we’ll be able to be more appealling through our visual content.

If you want to get the most out of the new images, make sure you upload them within any of the following sizes:

Standard images: 720, 960 or 2048 pixels, although for the last size don’t forget to mark the option “High Quality”.

This new design also comes with a new brand writing. Have you also noticed now it’s easier to read through?

So what is then the negative side of this change?

That it’s an undercover change of the algorithm. Yes, Facebook hasn’t changed the algorithm, we all have heard of it. But in spite of this, the social platform has warned the agencies and big clients to watch their organic reach over the next few months, since it’s going to drop dramatically up to 1 or 2% of your fans, according to CNET. That means we’ll barely reach our fans without Advertising.

2. And your fanpage will also change…

All changes are running slowly, but some of your Pages probably have already this look:

For those of you who don’t have it yet, pay closer attention to the image over these words and you’ll realize this interface is very similar to profiles’. If many small business owners used to have problems distinguishing between Pages and profiles, now it’s going to be a total mess. Not to worry, we’ll face it together! 😉

These are basically the highlights of the new brand Pages:

– The Timeline format is spread in just one column to your right. Now it’s more clear and easier to read through. It looks almost like a blogsite!

– To your left you’ll find all info about your Page, including the map if you use it, pictures and videos.

– From now on you’ll find easier to access to metrics from the upper banner. You also have a quick view of the main indicators in the right up corner. The section “Pages To Watch” is now placed within the rest of your Insights.

– Keep an eye on your Cover Photo! Although sizes are still the same, the name of your Page will appear in white over the image, so maybe you’ll need to redesign it.

3. New Advertising Structure…

That reminds me to Google Adwords pretty much. Let’s go through the new model:

So far the Ad Set didn’t exist. We used to creat a campaign, set up a budget and design as many ads as wanted, each of them with a specific goal, such as “drive traffic to my website”.

Along with this new structure you’ll have to choose the goal when creating your campaign. What do you want to achieve?

Let’s say you have three different purposes:

– Drive traffic to your brand website.

– Arise your brand awareness

– Grow your fans’ engagement.

Well, with this new organization, you’ll have to creat a campaign for each of those objectives:

– Click to Website

– Page Likes

– Page Post Engagement

The Ad Sets represents the audience you want to reach. For instance, let’s create a few Ad Sets within the Campaign 1 “Clicks to Website”, that will be reaching “Moms”, “Local Audience” and “Men between 20 – 40 years old”. Those would be three different Ad Sets, one for each audience.

It’s in this step when you’ll have to set up a specific budget for each of your Ad Sets. Then Facebook will split it among all ads you’ve included in that Ad Set, taking into account which one is grabbing more attention.

Of course, the creativity is still on your back, since you can design as many ads as you want within each Ad Set, including video format.

I actually like these changes, apart from the organic reach issue. All of them are aimed to make our work easier. And yes, maybe it is the moment to start experimenting with Facebook Advertising. With as little as 30 dollars per month you’ll be able to have a low-cost advertising campaign rolling in a non-stop basis, if you know how to do it. If you don’t, stick to this site because I’m writing a complete guide about how to advertise on Facebook like professionals do! Stay tuned!

In the meantime, follow the latest trends and info about social media via our Twitter or Google+ accounts, find new pictures and infographics on Pinterest or join our interesting conversations with other specialists on the fanpage and LinkedIn Group. I’ll be waiting for you!

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Comments

The new layout really does look just like a profile page, I’m not sure I like it at all. The way I saw it, the business pages were supposed to be set up to be more professional than a ‘normal’ friend page. Or am I being too picky?

No, you’re not being picky. It should be different from the profile indeed, but still what I think Facebook try to do is pushing the interactions of fans with Pages. It’s clear that users interact better with a personal profile than with a Page. Maybe this strategy could work. We’ll see! Thanks a lot for commenting, James!